I personally prefer the sound of an air conditioner, though back then when I was in university I had to babysit a toddler — about nine or ten months of age — for a friend.

The precious little bugger wouldn’t quit squawking and was upset that mum had gone out to work. I tried to calm him down and even offered some strawberry-flavored yogurt but he just threw it at my face. Ow!

I had a lot of homework to do and a major math exam to take the next day so I didn’t have much of a choice but to turn on the vacuum cleaner to drown out his incessant squabbling.

As luck would have it, after about half a minute I shot a quick glance over my shoulder to check up on him and before I knew it he was on the couch sound asleep… humbly drooling over his plush polar bear. Fart!

I’ve also heard success stories over the years from friends and moms lulling their babies to sleep by turning on the vacuum cleaner:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBKby5yKjNY

Thus I’ve recorded this as a somewhat sensible alternative to burning out your vacuum cleaner’s motor — the model is a progressive upright Kenmore.

Because vacuum cleaners are so boisterously high-pitched, personal preference and past empirical conditioning (some parents use them to get their children out of bed in the mornings) are large determining factors in their effectiveness as a source of white noise sleep aid. Some people hate it, some people love it.

When a gas furnace in a home is running, it produces a fantastical, warm, and comforting, low rumbling drone that could knock you right out into a nappy catnap. It’s just a thoroughly entrancing sound.

There are a few nuisances however — the thing is, if you wanna hear it right at the climax of your siesta, the reassuring hum is probably way too quiet to hear from your bedroom (assuming you have one, of course). And if you do have a furnace, it only runs in 5-10 minute intermittent spurts.

At the foot of the environing grassy hill-dome meadows of Mount Elbrus in Caucacus National Park, a blissfully soothing mountain valley brook is heard plainly speaking and singing its pebbly words and songs across a green sedgy glade.

A perfect array of atmospheric binaural imaging blends with sedate percussive notes of water to generate a palpable tranquility.

This mountain meadow brook slowed in a wide bend, and the recording location narrowed my attention to the small drops beating on stones, glinting on angles of jutting rocks, whispering, cooing, plashing, throbbing in one waterful song — the resulting white noise ambience boasting a very delicate auditory texture combining both soporific harmonics with meditative introspection.

Meadow Brook Meditation is a publication of nature’s own written music, music derived from the rush and trill of a thousand untraceable sources — the whole air vibrates with myriad liquid voices blended that we cannot analyze.

These such natural wilderness waters are always ever varying, always so remarkably compounded. Miles of drip are distilled from humble fern moss and minerals, and no two streams are alike. Meandrous mafficking mountain water is one thing, languorous exogitative listless lake water another, rumbling rambling rabblerousing rivers another — while town water, deadened and lost, is nothing — not water at all.

The afternoon wind was a mere soft breathing, and this roving rivulet of rambling water caught my ear as the loch emptied its way down the valley of rocks and boulders.

The sonic texture of this natural music is flavored with the distinct aura of a non-distractive outdoor spaciousness that has its bubbles spinning and dancing along with the expanding delicacy of nimble swirling eddies and a thousand glittering rills.

The resulting composition is soothing, yet still capable of bubbling and bobbling with delightful incentive.

This is a one-hour uninterrupted conglomeration of gentle soothing rain and the occasional growl of thunder. Recorded right on my friend’s patio in a quiet secluded woodland area, there is no music and no sounds of animals, voices, or industry.

It is late May, at the end of the warmest and sunniest day of spring so far. The ice has left the lakes. The first needles and leaves are just starting to open on the small trees and shrubs, the grasses sprouting, and ferns are beginning to poke their fiddle heads through the mosses and leaves.

The sun has set and as the last vestiges of daylight peacefully fade from a mesmerizing firmament suffused by lavender brumes and amaranthine clouds, a shift of activity occurs among the night crickets while water trickles down the walls and down onto the rough consortium of rocks and cement.

Intended less for intense listening and more for scene-setting and sipping your favorite beverage to, the concluding audio portrait is a cleansing cooling rainshower that leaves a sublime state of calm and relaxation.

A late winter evening on a stranded secluded rocky pine island. Life slows its pace as a heavenly pulsation of effervescent ocean surf immerses the mind with currents of emotional ambiguity.

Unified waves of liquid sound flow into expansions of mammoth proportions, filling the mental universe with their calming effect.

Mesmerized, the binaural listener moves without motion, subconsciously searching through synapses triggered by the psychosomatic response of oceanic oscillations stretched to the point of infinity.

These efferent waves of natural white noise achieve an unfurling that is hidden in the soothing nature of the melodic evolution of the elements. This unfurling produces somewhat of an inspirational effect, as the sonic mood effortlessly carries the listener into contemplative regions — and the listener’s inner consciousness finds itself expanding in direct ratio to the ocean tide’s intangible growth.

I set the binaural microphones into the shoreline rocks of the eastern end of this small (but relatively steep) island. Rolling Surf can be utilized as an invigorating, simultaneously unintrusive background ambience to facilitate concentration.

Rolling Surf is a non-looped natural soundscape composed of an hour-long on-location digital stereo quasi-binaural field recording. This recording technique produces a three-dimensional audio image when listening with earphones or headphones. Bitrate encoded at 192 kbps for finest audio reproduction.

In the upper mountain highlands of Ontario, in a steep sided but wide spaced valley, a stream meanders from wetland to wetland flowing through a mixed forest of white pine, red maples, and white, yellow and black birches. This is a rocky wilderness of deer, moose, and beaver — although none were captured in the recording.

The stream has a light cerebral character that bears a certain sense of grounding for reflective thought and meditation. The surround-sound recording of water immerses the listener in the stream experience to wash away tension and cleanse the soul, effectively distracting the mind from the thoughts of everyday stress and concerns, allowing the mind (and body) to relax. A friend observed that this recording was ideal in helping her make the transition from a stressful workday to home life. She had also asked when and why I had become interested in field recording.

Hum… if I really think about it, it’s hard to say. I have had access to tape recorders ever since I was a kid and was always fascinated by the process of recording sounds and playing them back. There is something inherently rousing in using recorded sound as a form of sensory feedback.

While in high school I distinctly remember recording a thunderstorm on my boom box. Despite the awful quality, I used to listen to that recording again and again and reflect on exactly what it was that made me want to preserve that entirely natural experience. There was something unique in trying to capture sonic events in the world beyond human control and conscious intention.

In the beginning it’s usually about recording one’s voice then trying to bang on random stuff to make “music”. But simply recording yourself making noise doesn’t always mean it’s “music”. Any produced sound is at first a seed for some form of reflective activity and if the noise develops into a coherent form or simply even a reason to continue the activity, then we might be looking at “music”, which for me is more of a social phenomenon.

From time to time I prefer to use the term “sound capturing” rather than “field recording” (which stems from a rather technical description than an instinctual activity), because of the ephemeral nature of sound, and the need to include the element of human decision in the act of recording. So — we have the “self” and the “field”, or rather internal and external domains where a unique form of exchange happens via the medium of sound along with the technical means to mediate that exchange.

The field is entered and one chooses to use one sense over another. Hearing becomes the tool for a deeper form of listening, the metaphor we know as a form of reflective thought.

So the story continues that every time I was lucky enough to have access to a portable recorder I was instinctually drawn to “the field”, to creeks, forests, lakes, rivers, buildings, crowds and areas of random appliances.

The field is an open system where sound cannot be controlled but rather explored and contributed to. It is the unknown elements, the small surprises and everyday discoveries that keep me going out and listening for more. I’ve always told my clients that the closer you listen, the more you will hear. But that in fact is my very approach to the sounding world in general. From the microscopic events of water ripples and insect behavior to the cosmological planetary cycles, there is an infinitely boundless field in which to play and hear.

If there is one thing I would relinquish my left buttock for should such a situation arise, it’d most unequivocally hands down bar none be keeping the great privilege of couchsurfing. When I traveled to Estonia on business I had stayed with couchsurfing host Hedi for two wonderful days and I was wholesomely treated and catered to fifty times better than any five star resort could’ve managed. She provided free transportation, free information, free food, a free bed, but most importantly friendship and great conversation.

Keen on archiving nature’s myriad proclamations, one of the places she took me to was a secluded stoney beach where she had spent her childhood summers. A beach which at the water’s edge sang over a gravelly bed and curved and frisked in and out and here and there — a divine place for wading, which on one side is brisk sparkling water as far as the eye can see, while on the other side there is endless wilderness — a land of forest, rocks, and hills.

Though a poverty of wildlife was noted, suffice it to say shoreline listening often offers the most productive diversity of sounds and interesting acoustic behavior. Where the two meet, the water action has gently polished and softened the edges of the stones and boulders over the millennia. It is a process that continues today as light saline waves continue to roll towards the Baltic shore. When they reach the shore, the gentle waves create musical splashes as they wash over the rocks. This relaxing melody forms a unique counterpoint to the sound of the main breaking waves.

Baltic Waves is perfect for lounging and meditation, or for a cooling ambience. There are no birds or animals or music. It is simply the relaxing sounds of water and waves. Edited digital binaural field recording. Encoded at a bitrate of 192 kbps for quality listening.

The low, bassy rumble heard inside the space pod as its rocket engine propulsion system is running, combined with the sounds of the heating and cooling systems onboard, creates a complex and soothing aural atmosphere that conveys warmth, comfort, and utter, complete solitude – not a cradle of civilization exists here.

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